Designing United Nations Targeted Sanctions
Publisher: The Graduate Institute, Geneva
Author(s): Thomas J. Biersteker, Sue E. Eckert, Marcos Tourinho
Date: 2012
Topics: Conflict Prevention, Governance
Targeted sanctions are increasingly utilized by the United Nations to address the range of threats to international peace and security, yet in twenty years of experience, there has been no comprehensive study of their impacts and effectiveness. The Targeted Sanction Consortium (TSC) was formed to analyze systematically UN targeted sanctions and to develop a sound empirical basis upon which practical tools useful to sanctions policymakers may be derived. Comprised of more than forty scholars and policy practitioners from around the world, the TSC is organized into sixteen research teams studying major UN sanctions regimes.
TSC conceptual innovations include evaluating sanctions by: (1) episodes within broader country cases which allows detailed analysis of changes in types and purposes of targeted sanctions over time (resulting in a TSC quantitative database of 56 case episodes for comparative analysis, with more than 280 variables for each, as well as qualitative summaries of each case); (2) multiple and differing purposes of targeted sanctions -‐ to coerce (change behavior), constrain (access to critical goods/funds, raising costs and forcing changes in strategy), and signal/stigmatize targets (in support of international norms).